John said to her, “You’d be having a man handle that bull by kindness, maybe.”
She swung about and said quickly, “I’d be having a man take an ax and chop that red bull to little bits.”
He stood still and she looked up at him; and after an instant she hotly asked, “Are you laughing? Why are you laughing at me?”
He said gently, “You that were so strong against any killing—talking so of the red bull.”
She cried furiously, “Oh, you—— John Evered, you! I hate you! I’ll always hate you. You and your father—both of you. Don’t you laugh at me!”
A little frightened at the storm he had evoked he touched her arm. She wrenched violently away, was near falling, recovered herself. “Don’t touch me!” she bade him.
He watched her run into the house.
ONE day in the first week of September, a day when there was a touch of frost in the air, and a hurrying and scurrying of the clouds overhead as though they would escape the grip of coming winter, Evered took down his double-bitted ax from its place in the woodshed and went to the grindstone and worked the two blades to razor edge. John was in the orchard picking those apples which were already fit for harvesting. Ruth was helping him.
There was not much of the fruit, and Evered had said to them, “I’ll go down into the woodlot and get out some wood.”
When he was gone Ruth and John looked at each other; and John asked, “Does he know Darrin is there, I wonder? Know where he is?”
Ruth said, “I don’t know. He sees more than you think. Anyway, it won’t hurt him to know.”
Evered shaped the ax to his liking, slungit across his shoulder, and walked down the wood road till he came to a growth of birch which was ready for the ax. The trees would be felled and cut into lengths where they lay, then hauled to the farm and piled in the shed to season under cover for a full twelve months before it was time to use the wood. Evered’s purpose now was simply to cut down the trees, leaving the later processes for another day.
He had chosen the task in response to some inner uneasiness which demanded an outlet. The man’s overflowing energy had always been his master; it drove him now, drove him with a new spur—the spur of his own thoughts. He could never escape from them; he scarce wished to escape, for he was never one to dodge an issue. But if he had wished to forget, Fraternity would not have permitted it. The men of the town, he saw, were watching him with furtive eyes; the women looked upon him spitefully. He knew that most people thought he should have killed the red bull before this; but Evered would not kill the bull, partly from native stubbornness, partly from an unformed feeling that he, not the bull, was actually responsible. He was growing old through much thought upon the matter; and it is probable that only his own honest certainty of his wife’s misdoing kept him from going mad. He slept little. His nerves tortured him.
He struck the ax into the first tree with a hot energy that made him breathe deep with satisfaction. He sank the blade on one side of the tree, and then on the other, and the four-inch birch swayed and toppled and fell. The man went furiously to the next, and to the next thereafter. The sweat began to bead his forehead and his pulses began to pound.
He worked at a relentless pace for perhaps half an hour, drunk with his own labors. At the end of that time, pausing to draw breath, he knew that he was thirsty. It was this which first brought the spring to his mind, the spring where his wife had died.
He had not been near the spot since the day he found her there. The avoidance had been instinctive rather than conscious. He hated the place and in some measure he feared it, as much as it was in the man to fear anything. He could see it all too vividly without bringing the actual surroundings before his eyes. The thought of it tormented him. And when his thirst made him remember the spring now his first impulse was to avoid it. His second—because it was ever the nature of the man to meet danger or misfortune or unpleasantness face to face—was to go to the place and drink his fill. He stuck his ax into a stump and started down the hill. This was not like that other day when he had gone along this way. That day his wife had been killed was sultry and lowering and oppressive; there was death in the very air. To-day was bright, crisp, cool; the air like wine, the earth a vivid panorama of brilliant coloring, the sky a vast blue canvas with white clouds limned lightly here and there. A day when life quickened in the veins; a day to make a man sing if there was song in him.
There was no song in Evered; nevertheless, he felt the influence of the glory all about him. It made him, somehow, lonely; and this was strange in a man so used to loneliness. It made him unhappy and a little sorry for himself, a little wistful. He wanted, without knowing it, someone to give him comradeship and sympathy and friendliness. He had never realized before how terribly alone he was.
His feet took unconsciously the way they had taken on that other day; but his thoughtswere not on the matter, and so he came at last to the knoll above the spring with something like a shock of surprise, for he saw a man sitting below; and for a moment it seemed to him this man was Semler, that Mary sat beside him. He brushed a rough hand across his eyes, and saw that what he had taken for his wife’s figure was just a roll of blanket laid across a rock; and he saw that the man was not Semler but Darrin.
He had never thought of the possibility that Darrin might have camped beside the spring. Yet it was natural enough. This was the best water anywhere along the swamp’s edge. A man might drink from the brook, but not with satisfaction in a summer of such drought as this had seen. But the spring had a steady flow of cool clear water in the driest seasons. This was the best place for a camp. Darrin was here.
Evered stood still, looking down on Darrin’s camp, until the other man felt his eyes and looked up and saw him.
When he saw Evered, Darrin got to his feet and laid aside his book and called cheerfully, “Come aboard, sir. Time you paid me a call.”
Evered hesitated; then he went, stumbling a little, down to where Darrin was. “I’m getting out some wood,” he said. “I just came down for a drink.”
“Sit down,” said Darrin in a friendly way. “Fill your pipe.”
The old Evered, the normal Evered even now would have shaken his head, bent for his drink from the spring and gone back to his work. But Evered was in want of company this day; and Darrin had a cheerful voice, a comradely eye. Darrin seemed glad to see him. Also the little hollow about the spring had a fascination for Evered. Having come to the spot he was unwilling to leave it, not because he wished to stay, but because he wished to go. He stayed because he dreaded to stay. He took Darrin’s cup and dipped it in the spring and drank; and then at Darrin’s insistence he sat down against the bowlder and whittled a fill for his pipe and set it going.
Darrin during this time had been talking with the nimble wit which was characteristic of the man. He made Evered feel more assured, more comfortable than he had felt for a long time. And while Darrin talkedEvered’s slow eyes were moving all about, marking each spot in the tragedy that was forever engraved upon his mind—there had sat his wife, there Semler, yonder stood the bull—terribly vivid, terribly real, so that the sweat burst out upon his forehead again.
Darrin, watching, asked, “What’s wrong? You look troubled.”
And Evered hesitated, then said huskily, “It’s the first time I’ve been here.”
He did not explain; but Darrin understood. “Since your wife was killed?”
“Yes.”
Darrin nodded. “It was here by the spring, wasn’t it?”
Evered answered slowly, “Yes. She was—lying over there when I found her.” He pointed to the spot.
Darrin looked that way; and after a moment, eyes upon the curling smoke of his pipe, he asked casually, “Where was Semler?”
His tone was easy, mildly interested and that was all; nevertheless, his word came to Evered with an abrupt and startling force. Semler? He had told no one save John that Semler was here that day; he knew John would never have told. Ruth knew; but shetoo was close-mouthed. Fraternity did not know. Yet Darrin knew.
“Where was Semler?” Darrin had asked, so casually.
And Evered cried, “Semler? Who said he was here?”
Darrin looked surprised. “Why, I did not know it was a secret. He told me—himself.”
Evered was tense and still where he sat. “He—you know him?”
Darrin laughed a little. “I wouldn’t say that. I don’t care for the man. I met him a little before I came up here, and told him where I was coming; and he advised me not to come. Told me of this—tragedy.”
“Told you he was here?”
Darrin nodded. “Yes; how he tried to fight off the bull.”
Evered came to his feet, half crouching. “The black liar and coward ran like a rabbit,” he said under his breath; and his face was an ugly thing to see.
Darrin cried, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—waken old sorrows. It doesn’t matter. Forget it.” He sought, palpably, to change to another topic. “Are you getting in your apples yet?”
Evered would not be put off. “See here,” he said. “What did Dane Semler tell you?”
“I’ve forgotten,” said Darrin. He smiled cheerfully. “That is to say, I mean to forget. It’s not my affair. Let’s not talk about it.”
Over Evered swept then one of those impulses to speech, akin to the impulses of confession. He exclaimed with a tragic and miserable note in his voice. “By God, if I don’t talk about it sometime it’ll kill me.”
Darrin looked up at him, gently offered; “I’ll listen, then. It may ease you to—tell the story over. Go ahead, Mr. Evered. Sit down.”
Evered did not sit down. But the story burst from him. Something, Darrin’s sympathy or the anger Darrin’s reference to Semler had roused, touched hidden springs within the man. He spoke swiftly, eagerly, as though with a pathetic desire to justify himself. He moved to and fro, pointing, illustrating.
He told how Zeke Pitkin had brought word that the red bull was loose in the woodlot. “I stopped at the house,” he said. “There was no one there; and that scared me. When I came down this way I thought of this spring.My wife used to like to come here. And I was scared, Darrin. I loved Mary Evered, Darrin.”
He caught himself, as though his words sounded strangely even in his own ears. When he went on his voice was harsh and hard.
“I came to the knoll up there”—he pointed to the spot—“and saw Mary and Semler here, sitting together, talking together. Damn him! Like sweethearts!” The red floods swept across the man’s face as the tide of that old rage overwhelmed him. “Damn Semler!” he cried. “Let him come hereabouts again!”
He went on after a moment: “I was too late to do anything but shout to them. The bull was coming at them from over there, head down. When I shouted they heard me, and forgot each other; and then they saw the red bull. Semler could have stopped him or turned him if he’d been a man. If I had been nearer I could have killed the beast with my hands, in time. But I was too far away; and Semler ran. I tell you, Darrin, he ran! He turned tail, and squawked, and ran along the hillside there. But Mary did not run. She could not; or she wouldn’t. And the red bull hit her here; and tossed her there. One blowand toss. He has no horns, you’ll mind. Semler running, all the time. Tell him, when you go back—tell him he lied.”
He was abruptly silent, his old habit of reticence upon him. And he was instantly sorry that he had spoken at all. To speak had been relief, had somehow eased him. Yet who was Darrin? Why should he tell this man?
Darrin said gently, “The bull did not trample her?”
Evered answered curtly, “No. I reached him.”
Darrin nodded. “You could handle him?”
“The beast knows me,” said Evered.
And even while he spoke he remembered how the great bull, as though regretting that which he had done, had stood quietly by until he was led away. He did not tell Darrin this; there were no more words in him. He had spoken too much already. Darrin was watching him now, he saw; and it seemed to Evered that there was a hard and hostile light of calculation in the other’s eye.
He turned away his head, and Darrin asked, “How came she here with Semler?”
Evered swung toward the man so hotly thatfor a moment Darrin was afraid; and then the older man’s eyes misted and his lips twisted weakly and he brushed them with the back of his hand.
He did not answer Darrin at all; and after a moment Darrin said, “Forgive me. It must hurt you to remember; to look round here. You must see the whole thing over again.”
Evered stood still for a moment; then he said abruptly: “I’ve sat too long. I’ll be back at work.”
He went stiffly up the knoll. Darrin called after him, “Come down again. You know the way.”
Evered did not turn, he made no reply. When he was beyond the other’s sight he stopped once and looked back, and his eyes were faintly furtive. He muttered something under his breath. He was cursing his folly in having talked with Darrin.
Back at his work Evered was uneasy; but his disquiet would have been increased if he could have seen how Darrin busied himself when he was left alone. The man sat still where he was till Evered had passed out of sight above the knoll; sat still with thoughtful eyes, studying the ground about him and considering the things which Evered had said. And once while he sat with his eyes straight before him, thinking on Evered’s words, he said to himself: “The man did love his wife.” And again: “There’s something hurting him.”
After a little he got up and climbed the knoll cautiously, till he could look in the direction Evered had taken. Evered was not in sight; and when he could be sure of this Darrin went along the shelf above the spring, toward the wood road that came down from the farm. At the road he turned round and retraced his steps, trying to guess the path Evered would have taken to come in sight of the spring itself.
When he came to the edge of the knoll he noted the spot, and cast back and tried again, and still again. He seemed to seek the farthest spot from which the spring was visible. When he had chosen this spot he stood still, surveying the land below, picturing to himself the tragedy that had been enacted there.
He seemed to come to some conclusion in the end, for he paced with careful steps the distance from where he stood to the rock where Mary Evered had been sitting. From that spot again he paced the distance to thealder growth through which the bull had come. Returning, eyes thoughtful, he took pencil and paper and plotted the scene round him, and set dots upon it to mark where Evered must have stood, and where Mary and Semler had sat, and the way by which the bull had come.
The man sat for a long hour that afternoon with this rude map before him, considering it; and he set down distances upon it, and marked the trees. Once he took pebbles and moved them upon his map as the bull and Semler and Evered must have moved upon this ground.
In the end, indecision in his eyes, he folded the paper and put it carefully into his pocket. Then he made a little cooking fire and prepared his supper and ate it. When he had cleaned up his camp he put on coat and cap and started along the hillside below the bull pasture to the road that led toward Fraternity.
This was not unusual with Darrin. He was accustomed to go to the village three or four times a week for his mail or to sit round the stove in Will Bissel’s store and listen to the talk of the country. He had got some profit from this: Jim Saladine, for example, told him one night of a fox den, and took him nextday to the spot; and by a week’s patience Darrin had been able to get good pictures of the little foxes at their play. And Jean Bubier had taken him up to the head of the pond to see a cow moose pasturing with Jean’s own cows. Besides these tangible pieces of fortune he had acquired a fund of tales of the woods. He liked the talk about the stove, and took his own share in it so modestly that the men liked him.
Once or twice during his stay in the town there had been talk of Evered; and Darrin had led them to tell the man’s deeds. Great store of these tales, for Evered’s daily life had an epic quality about it. From the murdering red bull the stories went back and back to that old matter of the knife and Dave Riggs, now years agone. Telling this story Lee Motley told Darrin one night that it had made a change in Evered.
Darrin had asked, “What did he do?”
And Motley said: “First off, he didn’t seem bothered much. But it changed him. He’d been wild and strong and hard before, but there was some laughing in him. I’ve always figured he took the thing hard. I’ve not seen the man laugh, right out, since then.”
Darrin said, “You can’t blame him. It’s no joke to kill a man.”
Motley nodded his agreement. “It made a big change in Evered,” he repeated.
Darrin’s interest in Evered had not been sufficiently marked to attract attention, for Evered was a figure of interest to all the countryside. Furthermore, there was talk that Darrin and Ruth MacLure liked each other well; and the town thought it natural that Darrin should be curious as to the man who might be his brother-in-law. Everyone knew that Ruth and John Evered had been more than friends. There was a friendly and curious interest in what looked like a contest between Darrin and John.
This night at Will’s store Darrin had little to say. He bought paper and envelopes from Will and wrote two letters at the desk in Will’s office; and he mailed them, with a special-delivery stamp upon each one. That was a thing not often done in Fraternity; and Will noticed the addresses upon the letters. To Boston men, both of them.
Afterward, Darrin sat about the store for a while, and then set off along the road toward Evered’s farm. Zeke Pitkin gave hima lift for a way; and Darrin remembered that Evered had named this man, and he said to Zeke: “You saw Evered’s bull break out, that day the beast killed Mary Evered, didn’t you?”
Zeke said yes; and he told the tale, coloring it with the glamor of tragedy which it would always have in his eyes. And he told Darrin—though Darrin had heard this more than once before—how Evered had killed his, Zeke’s, bull with a knife thrust in the neck, a day or two before the tragedy. “That same heavy knife of his,” he said. “The one he killed Dave Riggs with.”
Darrin asked, “Still uses it—to butcher with?”
“Yes, sir,” said Zeke. “I’ve seen him stick more’n one pig with that old knife in the last ten year.”
Darrin laughed a little harshly. “Not very sentimental, is he?”
“There ain’t a human feeling in the man,” Pitkin declared.
When Zeke stopped to let Darrin down at the fork of the road Darrin asked another question. “Funny that Semler should skip out so sudden that day, wasn’t it?”
“You bet it uz funny,” Zeke agreed. “I’ve allus said it was.”
“Did you see him the day he left?”
Pitkin shook his head. “Huh-uh. I was busy all day, and over in North Fraternity in the aft’noon. Got to the store right after he lit out.”
Darrin walked to his camp, lighting his steps with an electric torch, and made a little fire for cheerfulness’ sake, and wrapped in his blankets for sleep. He had set a camera in the swamp that day, with a string attached to the shutter in a fashion that should give results if a moose came by. He wondered whether luck would be with him. His thoughts as sleep crept on him shifted back to Evered again. A puzzle there—a question of character, of reaction to emotional stimulus. He asked himself: “Now if I were an emotional, hot-tempered man and came upon my wife with another man, and saw her in swift peril of her life—what would I do?”
He was still wondering, still questioning, still trying to put himself in Evered’s shoes when at last he dropped asleep.
DARRIN and Ruth had come to that point in friendship where they could sit silently together, each busy with his or her own thoughts, without embarrassment. The girl liked to come down the hill of an afternoon for an hour with the man; and sometimes he read to her from one of the books of which he had a store. And sometimes he showed her the pictures he had made—strange glimpses of the life of the swamp. His camera trap caught curious scenes. Now and then a deer, occasionally a moose, once a wildcat screeching in the night. And again they had to look closely to see what it was that had tugged the trigger string; and sometimes it was a rabbit, and sometimes it was a mink; and at other times it was nothing at all that they could discover in the finished photograph. Once a great owl dropped on some prey upon the ground and touched the string; and the plate caught him, wings flying, talons reaching—a picture of the wild things that prey.
Most of the pictures were imperfect—blurred or shadowed or ill-focused. Out of them all there were only four or five that Darrin counted worth the saving; but he and Ruth found fascination in the study of even the worthless ones.
It was inevitable that the confidence between them should develop swiftly in these afternoons together. It was not surprising that Ruth one afternoon dared ask Darrin a question. She had been curiously silent, studying him, until he noticed it, and laughed at her for it; and she told him then, “I’m wondering—whether we really know you here.”
He looked at her with a quick intentness, smiled a little. “Why?” he asked. “What are you thinking?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know, exactly. Just that sometimes I felt you’re hiding something; that you’re not thinking about the things you—seem to think about.”
He said good-naturedly, “You’re making a mystery out of me.”
“A little,” she admitted.
“There’s no mystery,” he said; and he added softly: “There’s a deal more mystery about you, to me.”
He had never, as they say, made love to her. Yet there was that in his tone now which made her flush softly and look away from him. Watching her he hesitated. His hand touched hers. She drew her hand away and rose abruptly.
“I must go back to the house,” she said. “It’s time I was starting supper.”
He was on his feet, facing her; but there was only cheerful friendliness in his eyes. He would not alarm her. “Come again,” he said. “I like to have you come.”
“You never come to the house, except for eggs and things. You ought to come and see us.”
“Perhaps I will,” he said; and he watched her as she climbed the knoll and disappeared. His eyes were very gentle; there would have been in them an exultant light if he could have seen the girl, once out of his sight, stop and look back to where the smoke of his little fire rose above the trees.
Darrin was much in her thoughts during these days. She would have thought of him more if she had been able to think less of John.
DARRIN’S departure came abruptly. He had gone to the village one night for his mail, and found a letter waiting, which he read with avid eyes. Having read it he put it away in his pocket, and came to Will Bissell and asked how he might most quickly reach Boston.
Will told him there was a morning train from town; and Darrin nodded and left the store. He decided to walk the ten miles through the night. It was cool and clear; the walk would be good for him. It would give him time for thinking.
He went back to his camp and slept till three in the morning. Then he made a little breakfast and ate it and packed his camp belongings under his tarpaulin for cover. To the tarp he fastened a note, addressed to Ruth. He wrote simply:
“Dear Ruth: I have to go away for four or five days, hurriedly. I would have said goodby if there were time. If it rains will you ask John to put my things under shelter somewhere? In the barn will do. There is a camera set at the crossing of the brook where the old pine is down. Perhaps he will find that and take care of it for me. My other things in the box here are safe enough. The box is waterproof.“I will not be long gone. I’m taking the morning train from town. Please remember me to Mr. Evered.“Yours,Fred.”
“Dear Ruth: I have to go away for four or five days, hurriedly. I would have said goodby if there were time. If it rains will you ask John to put my things under shelter somewhere? In the barn will do. There is a camera set at the crossing of the brook where the old pine is down. Perhaps he will find that and take care of it for me. My other things in the box here are safe enough. The box is waterproof.
“I will not be long gone. I’m taking the morning train from town. Please remember me to Mr. Evered.
“Yours,Fred.”
At a little after four, dressed in tramping clothes, but with other garments in a bundle under his arm, he started for town. He had time to change his garments there, and cash a check at the bank, and have a more substantial breakfast before he boarded the morning train.
Ruth discovered that Darrin had gone on the afternoon of his going. She went down to his camp by the spring with an eagerness of anticipation which she did not admit even to herself; and when she saw that he was not there she was at once relieved and unhappy.
The girl had stopped on the knoll above the camp; and she stood there for a moment looking all about, thinking Darrin might be somewhere near. Then she marked the careful order of the spot, and saw that all the camp gear was stowed away; and abruptly she guessed what had happened. She ran then down the knoll, and so came almost at once upon the note he had left for her.
She read this through, frowning and puzzling a little over the intricacies of his handwriting; and she did not know whether to be unhappy over his going or happy that he had remembered to leave this word for her. She did not press the scribbled note against her bosom, but she did read it through a second time, and then refold it carefully, and then take it out and read it yet again. In the end it was still in her hand when she turned reluctantly back up the hill. She put it in the top drawer of her bureau in her room.
She told John and Evered at suppertime that Darrin was gone. Evered seemed like a man relieved of a burden, till she added, “He’s coming back again, though.”
John asked, “How do you know?”
“He left a note for me,” she said.
John bent over his plate, hiding the hurt in his eyes. The girl told him of the camera setin the swamp, and John promised to go and fetch it, and to bring Darrin’s other belongings under shelter in the woodshed or the barn.
He managed this the next day; and Ruth made occasion to go to the barn more than once for the sheer happiness of looking upon them. John caught her at it once; but he did not let her know that he had seen. The young man was in these days woefully unhappy.
It is fair to say that he had reason to be. Ruth was kind to him, never spoke harshly or in an unfriendly fashion; in fact, she was almost too friendly. There was a finality about her friendliness which baffled him and erected a barrier between him and her. The man tried awkwardly to bring matters back to the old sweet footing between them; but the girl was of nimbler wit than he. She put him off without seeming to do so; she erected an impassable defense about herself.
On the surface they were as they had always been. Evered could see no difference in their bearing. Neighbors who occasionally stopped at the house decided that John and Ruth were going to be married when the time should come; and they told each other theyhad always said so. Before others the relations between the two were pleasantly friendly; but there were no longer the sweet stolen moments when their arms entwined and their lips met. When they were alone together Ruth treated John as though others were about; and John knew no way to break through her barriers.
About the fifth day after Darrin’s going Ruth began to expect his return. He did not come on that day, nor on the next, nor on the next thereafter. She became a little wistful, a little lonely. Toward the middle of the second week she found herself clinging with a desperate earnestness to a despairing hope. He had promised to come back; she thought he would come back. There had never been any word of more than friendliness between them; yet the girl felt that such a word must come, and that he would return to speak it.
One night she dreamed that he would never come again, and woke to find tears streaming across her cheeks. She lay awake for a long time, eyes wide and staring, wondering if she loved him.
During this interval of Darrin’s absence there manifested itself in Evered a curiouswistful desire to placate Ruth; to win her good will.
She noticed it first one day when the man had been very still, sitting all day in the kitchen with his eyes before him, brooding over unguessed matters. It was a day of blustering, blowing rain, a day when the wind lashed about the house and there was little that could be done out of doors. Ruth, busy about the room, watched Evered covertly; her eyes strayed toward him now and again.
She had not fully realized till that day how much the man was aging. The change had come gradually, but it had been marked. His hair, that had been black as coal six months before, was iron gray now; it showed glints that were snow white, here and there. The skin of his cheeks had lost its bronze luster; it seemed to have grown loose, as though the man were shrinking inside. It hung in little folds about his mouth and jaw.
His head, too, was bowing forward; his head that had always been so erect, so firm, so hard and sternly poised. His neck seemed to be weakening beneath the load it bore; and his shoulders were less square. They hung forward, as though the man were cold and were guarding his chest with his arms.
The fullness of the change came to Ruth with something of a shock, came when she was thinking it strange that Evered should be content to remain all day indoors. He was by nature an active man, of overflowing bodily energy; he was used to go out in all weathers to his tasks. She had seen him come in, dripping, in the past; his cheeks ruddy from the wet and cold, his eyes glowing with the fire of health, his chest heaving to great deep breaths of air. More and more often of late, she remembered, he had stayed near the stove and the fire, as though it comforted him.
Ruth had not John’s sympathetic understanding of the heart of Evered; nevertheless, she knew, as John did, that the man had—in his harsh fashion—loved his dead wife well. She had always known this, even though she had never been able to understand how a man might hurt the woman he loved. If she had not known, she would not have blamed Evered so bitterly for all the bitter past. It was one of the counts of her indictment of him that he had indeed loved Mary; and that even so hehad made the dead woman unhappy through so many years.
Watching him this day Ruth thought that sorrow was breaking him; and the thought somewhat modified, without her knowing it, the strength of her condemnation of the man. When in mid afternoon he took from her the shovel and broom with which she was preparing to clean out the ashes of the stove, and did the task himself, she was amazed and angry with herself to find in her heart a spark of pity for him.
“Let me do that, Ruthie,” he had said. “It’s hard for you.”
He had never been a man given to small chores about the house; he was awkward at it. His very awkwardness, the earnestness of his clumsy efforts—warmed the girl’s heart; she found her eyes wet as she watched him, and took recourse in an abrupt protest.
“You’re spilling the ashes,” she said. “Here, let me.”
She would have taken the broom from him, but Evered would not let it go. He looked toward her as they held the broom between them, and there was in his eyes such anagony of desire to please her that the girl had to turn away.
What was moving in Evered’s mind it is hard to say, hard to put in words. He had not yet surrendered to regret for the thing he had done; he was still able to bolster his courage, to strengthen himself by the reflection that his wife had wronged him. He was still able to fan to life the embers of his rage against her and against Semler. Yet the man was finding it hard to endure the hatred in Ruth’s eyes, the silent glances which met him when he went abroad, the ostracism of the village. He wanted comradeship in these days as he had never wanted it before. He desired the friendship of mankind; he desired, in an unformed way, the affection of Ruth. The girl had come to symbolize in his thoughts something like his own conscience. He was uncertainly conscious that if she forgave him, looked kindly upon him, bore him no more malice, he might altogether forgive himself for that which he had done.
Yet when he put this thought in words it evoked a revolt in his own heart; and he would cry out to himself, “I need no forgiveness! I’ve nothing to forgive! I was right to let thebull.... She was false as a witch; false as hell!”
He found poor comfort in this thought. So long as he believed his wife was guilty he could endure the torment of his own remorse, could relieve the pain of it. And if Ruth would only smile upon him, be her old friendly self to him again....
The man’s attentions to her were almost like an uncouth wooing. He began to study the girl’s wants, to find little ways to help her, to anticipate her desires, to ease her work about the house. He sought opportunities to talk with her, and drove himself to speak gently and ingratiatingly. He called her Ruthie, though she had always been Ruth to him before.
The man was pitiful; the girl could not wholly harden her heart against him. Naturally generous and kindly she caught herself thinking that after all he had loved Mary well; that he missed her terribly. Once or twice hearing him move about his room in the night she guessed his loneliness. She was more and more sorry for Evered.
Ruth was not the only one who saw that the man was growing old too swiftly. Theymarked the fact at Will Bissell’s store. Will saw it, and Lee Motley saw it, and Jim Saladine; these three with a certain sympathy. Jean Bubier saw it with sardonic amusement, tinged with understanding. Old Man Varney saw it with malice; and Judd in the meanness of his soul saw it with malignant delight.
“Looking for friends now, he is,” Judd exclaimed one night. “Him that was so bold before. Tried to start talk with me to-day. I turned my back on the man. I’d a mind to tell him why.”
Motley and Saladine spoke of the thing together. Motley said, “I think he—thought a deal of Mary—in the man’s way.”
And Saladine nodded and said: “Yes. But—there’s more to it than that, Lee. More than we know, I figure. Something hidden behind it all. A black thing, if the whole truth was to come out. Or so it looks to me.”
Saladine was a steady, thoughtful man, and Motley respected his opinion, and thought upon the matter much thereafter; but he was to come to no conclusion.
On his farm the change in Evered manifested itself in more than one way; in no way more markedly than in his lack of energy.He left most of the chores to John; and, what was more significant, he gave over to John full care of the huge red bull. It had been Evered’s delight to master that brute and bend it to his will. John and Ruth both marked that he avoided it in these later days. John had the feeding of it; he cleaned its stall; he tossed in straw for the creature’s bed. The bull was beginning to know him, to know that it need not fear him. He was accustomed to go into its stall and move about the beast without precautions, speaking gently when he spoke at all.
Ruth never saw this. She seldom went near the red bull’s stall. She hated the animal and dreaded it. On one occasion she did go near its pen. It was suppertime and the food was hot upon the table. She called John from the woodshed, and then came to the kitchen door to summon Evered. He was leaning against the high gate of the bull’s plank-walled yard looking in at the animal. Ruth called to him to come to supper, but he did not turn. She called again, and still the man did not move.
A little alarmed, for fear he might have been suddenly stricken sick, she went swiftlyacross the barnyard to where he stood, and looked at him, and looked into the pen.
Evered was watching the bull; and the bull stood a dozen feet away, watching the man. There was a stillness about them both which frightened the girl; a still intentness. Neither moved; their eyes met steadily without shifting. There was no emotion in either of them. It was as though the man were probing the bull’s mind, as though the bull would read the man’s thoughts. They were like persons hypnotized. Ruth shivered and touched Evered’s arm and shook it a little.
“Supper’s ready,” she said.
He turned to her with eyes still glazed from the intensity of their stare.
“Supper?” he echoed. Then remembrance came to him; and he nodded heavily and said with that wistfully ingratiating note in his voice, “Yes, Ruthie, I’m coming. Come; let’s go together.”
He took her arm, and she had not the hardness of heart to break away from him. They went into the house side by side.
IN mid-October Darrin returned afoot, as he had departed; and there was no warning of his coming. He reached the farm in the afternoon. John was in the woodlot at the time, cutting the wood into cord lengths in preparation for hauling. Evered had worked in the morning, but after dinner he sat down by the kitchen stove and remained there, in the dull apathy of thought which was becoming habitual to him. He was still there and Ruth was busy about the room when Darrin came to the door. Ruth had caught sight of him through the window; she was at the door to meet him and opened it before he knocked. She wanted to tell him how glad she was to see him; but all she could do was stand very still, her right hand at her throat, her eyes on his.
He said gently, “Well, I’ve come back. But it has been longer than I thought it would be.”
She nodded. “Yes, it has been a long time.”
There was so much of confession in her tone that the man’s heart pounded and he stepped quickly toward her. But when she moved back he saw Evered within the room, watching him with dull eyes; and he caught himself and his face sobered and hardened.
“My things are here?” he asked.
“In the shed,” she said. “John brought them up. I’ll show you.”
She stepped away and he followed her into the kitchen, toward the door that opened at one side into the shed.
She had already opened the door when Evered asked huskily, “Back, are you?”
Darrin said, “Yes.” There was an indescribable note of hostility in his voice which he could not disguise.
“Won’t be here long now, I figure,” Evered suggested.
“I don’t know,” said Darrin. “I’ll be here till I’ve done what I came to do.”
Evered did not speak for a minute; then he asked, “Get them moose pictures, you mean?”
Ruth looked from one man to the other in a bewildered way, half sensing the fact that both were wary and alert.
Darrin said, “Of course.”
Evered shook his head. “Dangerous business, this time o’ year. The old bulls have got other things on their mind besides having their pictures took.”
“I’ll risk it,” said Darrin.
“You’ve a right to,” Evered told him, and turned away.
Darrin watched the man for an instant; then he followed Ruth into the shed. She showed him his dunnage, packed in a stout roll; and he lifted it by the lashing and slung it across his shoulder.
“Mr. Evered is right,” she said. “The moose are dangerous—in the fall.”
He touched his roll with his left hand affectionately. “I’ve a gun here. My pistol, you know. I’ll be careful.”
She urged softly, “Please do.”
There was so much solicitude in her voice that Darrin was shaken by it; he slid the roll to the floor.
Then Evered came to the door that led into the shed; and he said, “I’ll help you down with that stuff.”
Darrin shook his head. “No need,” he replied. “I can handle it.”
He swung it up again across his shoulder; and Ruth opened the outer door for him. She and Evered stood together watching him cross the barnyard and lower the bars and pass through and go on his way.
When he was out of sight Ruth looked up at Evered; and the man said gently, “Glad to see him, Ruthie?”
She nodded, “I like him.”
“More than you like John?” the man asked.
And she said steadily, “I like them both. But Darrin is gentle, and strong too. And you Evereds are only cruelly strong.”
“I wouldn’t say John was cruel,” the man urged wistfully.
“He’s your son,” she said, the old bitterness in her voice.
And Evered nodded, as though in confession. He looked in the direction Darrin had taken.
“I wonder what he’s back for,” he said half to himself.
Ruth did not answer, and after a little she went back into the kitchen. She heard Evered working with his ax for a while, splitting up wood for the stove; and presently he brought in an armful and dumped it in the woodbox.It was a thing he had done before, though John was accustomed to carry her wood for her. As he dropped the wood now Evered looked toward her, as though to make sure she had seen; he smiled in a pleading, broken way. She thanked him, a certain sympathy in her voice in spite of herself. The man was so broken; he had grown so old in so short a time.
Darrin, bound toward his old camping ground at the spring, heard John’s ax in the birch growth at his left, but he did not turn aside. There was a new purpose in the man; his old pleasantly amiable demeanor had altered; his eyes were steady and hard. He reached the spring and disposed his goods, with a packet of provisions which he had brought from the village.
A little later he went back up the hill to get milk and eggs from the farm. It chanced that he found Evered in the barnyard; and Evered saw him coming, and watched him approach. They came face to face at the bars, and when Darrin had passed through he stood still, eying the other man and waiting for Evered to speak. There was a steady scrutiny in Evered’s eyes, a questioning; Darrin met this questioning glance with one that told nothing. His lips set a little grimly.
Evered asked at last, “You say you came back for more pictures?”
“Yes.”
“I’m wondering if you’ll get what you come for.”
Darrin said, “I intend to.”
Evered nodded quietly. “All right,” he agreed. “I don’t aim to hinder.”
He turned toward the barn; and as he turned Darrin saw that he had his knife slung in its leather sheath upon his hip. The sheath was deep; only the tip of the knife’s haft showed. Yet Darrin’s eyes fastened on this with a strange intentness, as though he were moved by a morbid curiosity at sight of the thing. The heavy knife had taken so many lives.
Darrin did not move till Evered had gone into the barn and out of sight; then the younger man turned toward the house, and knocked, and Ruth opened the door.
He asked, “Can I get milk to-night, and eggs; and have you made butter?”
She had been surprised to see him so soon again; she was a little startled, could not findwords at once. But she nodded and he came into the kitchen and she shut the door behind him, for the day was cold.
“We haven’t milked,” she said. “It will be a little while.”
Darrin, whose thoughts had been on other things, found himself suddenly swept by a sense of her loveliness. He had always known that she was beautiful, but he had held back the thought, had fought against it. Now seeing her again after so long a time he forgot everything but her. She saw the slow change in his eyes; and though she had longed for it, it frightened her.
She began to tremble, and tried to speak, but all she could say was, “Oh!”
Darrin came toward her then slowly. He had not meant to speak, yet the words came before he knew. “Ah, Ruth, I have missed you so,” he said.
Her eyes were dim and soft. She was miserably happy, an anguish of happiness.
He said, “I love you so, Ruth. I love you so.” And he kissed her.
The girl was swept as by a tempest. She had dreamed of this man for weeks, idealizing him, thinking him all that was fine andgentle and good. She gave herself to his kisses as though she were hungry for them. She was crying, tears were flowing down her cheeks; and at first she thought this was because she was so happy, while Darrin, half alarmed, half laughing, whispered to comfort her.
Then slowly the girl knew that she was not crying because she was so happy. She could not tell why she cried; she could not put her heart in words. It was as though she were lonely, terribly lonely. And she was angry with herself at that. How could she be lonely in his arms? In Darrin’s arms, his kisses on her wet cheeks?
She could not put the thought away. While he still held her she wept for very loneliness. He could not soothe her. She scarce heard him; she put her hands against him and tried to push him away, feebly at first. She did not want to push him away; yet something made her. He held her still; his arms were like bands of iron. He was so strong, so hard. Thus close against him she seemed to feel a rigor of spirit in the man. It was as though she were pressed against a wall. He freed her. “Please,” he said.
And she cried, as though to persuade herself, “Oh, I do love you! I do!”
But when he would have put his arms round her again she shrank away from him, so that he forbore. She turned quickly away to her tasks. She had time to compose herself before Evered came in, and later John. Then Darrin left with the things he had come to secure, and went down the hill in the early dusk of fall.
Ruth was thoughtful that evening; she went early to her room. She was trying desperately to understand herself. She had been drawn so strongly toward Darrin, she had found him all that she wanted a man to be. She had been miserable at his going, had longed for his return. She had wanted that which had come to pass this day. The girl was honest with herself, had always been honest with herself. She had known she loved him, longed for him.
Yet now he was returned, he loved her and his kisses only served to make her miserably lonely. She could not understand; slept, still without comprehending.
Darrin, next day, did not go into the swamp. He busied himself about the spring, producingagain that sketch which he had made on the day Evered told him the story of the tragedy. He was groping for something, groping for understanding, his forehead wrinkled and his eyes were sober with thought.
After he had cooked his dinner and eaten it the man sat for a long time by the fire, tending it with little sticks, watching the flames as though he expected to find in them the answer to his riddle. Once he took from his pocket a letter, and read it soberly enough, then put it back again. And once he took fresh paper and made a new sketch of the locality about him.
He seemed at last to come to some decision. The aspect of his countenance changed subtly. He got to his feet, pacing back and forth. At about four o’clock in the afternoon he put on his coat and started up the knoll toward the farm. When he had gone some fifty yards he stopped, hesitated, and came back to his camp fire. From his kit he selected the automatic pistol, saw that it held a loaded clip, belted it on. It hung under his coat inconspicuously.
He went on his way this time without hesitation; went steadily up the hill, reached thebars about the farmyard, passed through and knocked on the kitchen door.
Ruth came to the door; he asked her abstractedly, as though she were a stranger, where Evered was. She said he was in the shed; and Darrin went there and found Evered grinding an ax. The man looked up at his coming with sober eyes. Ruth had stayed in the kitchen.
Darrin said quietly, “Evered, I want to talk to you.”
Evered hesitated, studying the other. He asked, “What about?”
“A good many things,” Darrin told him.
Evered laid aside the ax. “All right,” he said.
“Come away from the house,” Darrin suggested.
There was a certain dominant note in his voice. The old Evered would have stayed where he was; but the old Evered was dead. “Come,” said Darrin; and he stepped out into the yard and Evered followed him. Darrin crossed to the bars and let them down. He and Evered passed silently through.
The men went, Darrin a little in the lead, down the hill toward the spring.
THE day was cold and damp and chill, with a promise of snow in the air; one of those ugly October days when coming winter seems to sulk upon the northern hills, awaiting summer’s tardy going. Clouds obscured the sky, though now and then during the morning the sun had broken through, laying a patch of light upon the earth and bringing out the nearer hills in bold relief against those that were farthest off. The wind was northeasterly, always a storm sign hereabouts. There was haste in it, and haste in the air, and haste in all the wild things that were abroad. The crows overhead flew swiftly, tumbling headlong in the racking air currents. A flock of geese passed once, high in the murk, their honking drifting faintly down to earth. The few ground birds darted from cover to cover; the late-pasturing cows had gone early to the barn. Night was coming early; an ominous blackness seemed about toshut down upon the world. The very air held threats and whispers of harm.
Evered and Darrin walked in silence down along the old wood road, through a birch clump, past some dwarfed oaks, and out into the open on the shelf above the spring.
Halfway across this shelf Darrin said “I’ve got some questions to ask you, Evered.”
Evered did not answer. Darrin had not stopped and Evered kept pace with him.
The younger man said, “This was the way you came that day your wife was killed, wasn’t it?”
Evered turned his head as though to speak, hesitated. Darrin stopped and caught his eye.
“Look here,” he demanded. “You’ve nothing to hide in that business, have you?”
“No,” said Evered mildly. He wondered why he answered the other at all; yet there was something in the younger man’s bearing which he did not care to meet, something dominant and commanding, as though Darrin had a right to ask, and knew that he had this right. “No,” said Evered; “nothing to hide.”
And Darrin repeated his question: “Was this the way you came?”
Evered nodded. As they went on nearer the spring Darrin touched his arm. “I want you to show me where you were when you first saw them—your wife, and Semler, and the bull.”
Evered made no response; but a moment later he stopped. “Here,” he said. Darrin looked down toward the spring and all about them. And Evered repeated, “Here, by this rock.”
The younger man nodded and passed down to the spring, with Evered beside him. Darrin sat down and motioned Evered to sit.
“What did you think, when you saw them?” he asked.
Evered’s cheeks colored slowly; they turned from bronze to red, from red to purple.
Darrin prompted him: “When you saw your wife and Semler here together.”
“What would you have thought?” Evered asked, his voice held steady.
Darrin nodded understanding. “You were angry?” he suggested.
Evered flung his head on one side with a fierce gesture, as though to shut out some unwelcome sight that assaulted his eyes.
Darrin, watching him acutely, waited for alittle before he asked: “Where was the bull, when you saw him first?”
Evered jerked his hand toward the right. “There,” he said.
Darrin got up and went in that direction, and moved to and fro, asking directions, till Evered told him he was near the spot. Darrin came back then and sat down.
“You thought she loved him?” he asked under his breath.
Evered shook his head, not in negation but as though to brush the question aside. Darrin filled his pipe and lighted it, and puffed at it in silence for a while.
“Pitkin told you the bull was loose, didn’t he?” he asked at last.
“Yes.”
“So you came down to get the beast?”
“Yes, I came for that.”
“Expect any trouble?”
“You can always look for trouble with the red bull.”
“How did you plan to handle him?”
“Brad, and nose ring.”
Darrin eyed the other sharply. “Wouldn’t have had much time to get hold of his nose ring if he’d charged, would you?”
“I had a gun,” said Evered. “A forty-five.”
“Oh,” said Darrin. “You had a gun?”
Evered, a little restive, cried, “Yes, damn it, I had a gun!”
“You must have felt like shooting Semler,” Darrin suggested; and Evered looked at him sidewise, a little alarmed. He seemed to put himself on guard.
Darrin got to his feet. “They were sitting by these rocks, weren’t they?”
“Yes.”
The younger man bent above the other. “Evered,” he said, “why didn’t you turn the bull from its charge?”
He saw Evered’s face go white, his eyes flickering to and fro. The man came to his feet.
“There was no time!” he exclaimed.
His voice was husky and unsteady; Darrin dominated him, seemed to tower above him. There was about Evered the air of a broken man.
Darrin pointed to the knoll. “You were within half a dozen strides of them. The bull was full thirty yards away.”
Evered cried, “Damn you!”
He turned abruptly, climbed the knoll. Darrin stood still till Evered was almost gone from his sight, then he shouted, “Evered!” Evered went on; and Darrin with a low exclamation leaped after him. Evered must have heard his pounding steps, but he did not turn. Darrin came up with him; he tugged his pistol from its holster and jammed it against Evered’s side.
“Turn round,” he said, “or I’ll blow you in two.”
Evered did not turn; he did not stop. Dusk had fallen upon them before this; their figures were black in the growing darkness. A pelting spray of rain swept over them, the drops like ice. Above them the hill was black against the gray western sky. Behind them and below the swamp brooded, dark and still. Surrounded by gloom and wind and rain the two moved thus a dozen paces—Evered looking straight ahead, Darrin pressing the pistol against the other’s ribs.
Then Darrin leaped past the other, into Evered’s path, his weapon leveled. “Stop!” he said, harshly. “You wife killer, stop, and listen to me!”
Evered came on; and Darrin in a voice that was like a scream warned him: “I’ll shoot!”
Evered did not stop. There was a certain dignity about the man, a certain strength. Against it Darrin seemed to rebound helplessly. Their rôles were reversed. Where Darrin had been dominant he was now weak; where Evered had been weak he was strong. The older man came on; he was within two paces. Darrin’s finger pressed the trigger—indecisively. Then Evered’s great fist whipped round like light and struck Darrin’s hand, and the pistol flew from his grip, end over end, and struck against a bowlder with a flash of sparks in the darkness. Darrin’s hand and wrist and arm were numbed by the blow; he hugged them against his body. Evered watched him, still as still. And Darrin screamed at him in a hoarse unsteady voice his black accusation.
“You killed her!” he cried. “In that black temper of yours you let the bull have her. You’re a devil on earth. Evered! You’re a devil among men!”
Evered lifted his hand, silencing the man. Darrin wished to speak and dared not. There was something terrible in the other’s demeanor, something terrible in his calm strength and purpose.
He said at last in set tones: “It was my right. She was guilty as hell!”
Darrin found courage to laugh. “You lie,” he said. “And that’s what I’m here to tell you, man. I ought to take you and give you to other men, to hang by the thick neck that holds up your evil head. But this is better, Evered. This is better. I tell you your wife, whom you killed, was as clean as snow.”
When he had spoken he was afraid, for the light in Evered’s eyes was the father of fear. He began to fumble in his coat in a desperate haste, not daring to look away, not daring to take his eyes from Evered’s. He fumbled there, and found the letter he had read beside his fire so carefully; found it and drew it, crumpled, forth. He held it toward Evered.
“Read,” he cried. “Read that, and see.”
Evered took the letter quietly; and before Darrin’s eyes the fury died in the other man. Over his face there crept a mask of sorrow irrevocable and profound. He said no word, but took the letter and opened it. The light was dim; he could not read till Darrin flashed his electric torch upon the page. A strangepicture, in that moment, these two—Evered, the old and breaking man; Darrin, young and vigorous; Evered dominant, Darrin tremulously exultant; Evered, his great head bent, his unaccustomed eyes scanning the written lines; Darrin holding the light beside him.
Evered was slow in reading the letter, for in the first place it was written in his wife’s hand, and he had loved her; so that his eyes were dimmed. He was not conscious of the words he read, though they were not important. It was the message of the lines that came home to him; the unmistakable truth that lay behind them. The letter of an unhappy woman to a man whom she had found friendly and kind. She told Semler that she loved Evered; told him this so simply there could be no questioning. Would always love Evered. Bade Semler forget her, be gone, never return. Nothing but friendliness for him. Bade him not make her unhappy. And at the end, again, she wrote that she loved Evered.
The man who had killed her did not so much read this letter as absorb it, let it sink home into his heart and carry its own conviction there.
It was not curiosity that moved him, not doubt that made him ask Darrin quietly: “How got you this?”
“From Semler,” Darrin told him. “I found him—followed him half across the country—told him what I guessed. That was the only letter he ever had from her. Written the day you killed her. Damn you, do you see!”
“How came they together?”
“He knew she liked to come to the spring; he found her there, argued with her. She told him she loved you; there was no moving her. She loved you, who killed her. You devil of a man!”
Evered folded the letter carefully and put it into his coat. “Why do you tell me?” he asked.
“Because I know you cared for her!” Darrin cried. “Because I know this will hurt you worse than death itself.”
Evered standing very still shook his head slowly. “That was not my meaning,” he explained patiently. “That is my concern. Why did you tell me? Why so much trouble for this? How did the matter touch you, Darrin?”
The younger man had waited for this moment, waited for it through the years of his manhood. He had planned toward it for months past, shaping it to his fancy. He had looked forward to it as a moment of triumph; he had seen himself towering in just condemnation above one who trembled before him. He had been drunk with this anticipation.
But the reality was not like his dreams. He knew that Evered was broken; that his soul must be shattered. Yet he could not exult. There was such a strength of honest sorrow in the old man before him, there was so much dignity and power that Darrin in spite of himself was shamed and shaken. He felt something that was like regret. He felt himself mean and small; like a malicious, mud-slinging, inconsiderable fragment of a man. His voice was low, it was almost apologetic when he answered the other’s question.
“How did the matter touch you, Darrin?” Evered asked; and the rain swept over them in a more tempestuous fusilade.
Darrin said in a husky choking voice: “I’m Dave Riggs’ son. You killed my father.”
Evered, silent a moment, slowly nodded as though not greatly surprised. “Dave Riggs’ boy,” he echoed. “Aye, I might have known.” And he added: “I lost you, years agone. I tried to make matters easier for you, for Dave’s sake. I was sorry for that matter, Darrin.”
Darrin tried to flog his anger to white heat again. “You killed my father,” he exclaimed. “When I was still a boy I swore that I’d pay you for that. And when I grew up I planned and planned. And when I heard about your wife, I came up here, to watch you—find out. I felt there was something. I told you I’d seen Semler, trapped you. You told me more than you meant to tell. And then I got trace of him, followed him. I did it to blast you, Evered; pay you for what you did to me. That’s why.”
He ended lamely; his anger was dead; his voice was like a plea.
Evered said gently and without anger. “It was your right.” And a moment later he turned slowly and went away, up the hill and toward his home.
Darrin, left behind, labored again to wake the exultation he had counted on; but he could not. He had hungered for this revenge of his, but there is no substance in raw and naked vengeance. You cannot set your teethin it. Darrin found that it left him empty, that he was sick of himself and of his own deeds.
“It was coming to him,” he cried half aloud.
But he could not put away from his thoughts the memory of Evered’s proud dignity of sorrow; he was abashed before the man.
He stumbled back to his rain-swept camp like one who has done a crime.